


All The Greatest Loves (Are The Unfinished Ones)

by skyline



Category: Big Time Rush
Genre: Break Up, Drinking, James is a dick, M/M, No happy endings, beer pong, fraternities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kendall and James were supposed to be forever. Written for <a href="www.bigtimebang.livejournal.com">Big Time Bang</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Greatest Loves (Are The Unfinished Ones)

**Author's Note:**

> So here’s the story with this one; a few months back, a reviewer on FFN asked me why I’m so mean to James. And I said, oh, you want to see mean? 
> 
> No, I kid. I actually had this idea floating around since the dark ages, or at least since late 2010 and the season finale of Greek, but I never really had the impetus to write it. Fortunately, I have awesome friends, and when I asked them to host a Big Bang with me so I could write all the shit I never would otherwise, they continued to be awesome and agreed. I have to thank my beta/love of my life jblostfan16 for doing the best last minute editing job a girl could ask for. 
> 
> And now I have to take a deep breath and ask if we can all take a minute to appreciate my artist, deadpetsparky, who went above and beyond the call of duty here, by creating so many gorgeous pieces (and a fanmix!) that my head is still spinning from it. Click on [ this ](http://deadpetsparky.livejournal.com/5809.html) art link, I swear you will not regret it.
> 
> Also, all opinions of fraternities or sororities are based completely on my experience of going to parties at Chi Phi at BU and rushing KPL at SBU, soooo. Hopefully I didn’t let anything too negative slip in; my personal opinion of Greek life is very double-sided. Consequently, I tried to stick to the good, the shiny, the beer. Additionally, uh, I actually tried to not name this frat Chi Phi anything, but naming a fraternity is kind of shockingly hard, and it ended up happening anyway. This is not meant in any way to reflect upon the boys of Chi Phi, except in that they do indeed throw some really freaking good parties.

 

 

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

Sex ruins everything.  
  
You can’t just be friends with a person when you know what they feel like naked, when you know what it’s like to be twined together, sweaty and perfect. And what if you don’t know what it is, exactly, that you want? What if sex happens, and then you realize that you’re looking for something totally different?  
  
“Don’t do it.”  
  
“I have to.”  
  
“Dude.” Carlos makes a face. “This is a really bad idea. In the history of bad ideas, this is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”  
  
“It’s not.”  
  
“It is. You’re such a fucking selfish asshole.” Carlos says it like he doesn’t mean it, but he does. It’s evident in every nuance of his expression.  
  
James wants to ask _why_? Because he won’t, can’t love Kendall back the way he wants? Kendall’s the one who’s selfish. He always needs so much time and attention and affirmation and blind faith, until James feels like he doesn’t have any control left at all. His life has slowly become Kendall’s, and he doesn’t like that one bit.  
  
James loves him, of course. James has never stopped loving him. But love really, honestly isn’t enough. He loves other things more, wants other things more. And he knows that one day, maybe he’ll just want _Kendall_ , and it will probably be too late. When that day comes, James will regret this thing that he is doing, regret that he’s always had the ability to let go when Kendall never really has.  
  
He goes through with it anyway.  
  
 _One day_ is far off in the future, and James just wants to live. He can’t be bogged down by this, not anymore.  
  
Not today.  
  
James breaks up with Kendall on a cold afternoon in California; fifty degrees and people are breaking out their fucking parkas. He went down on Kendall at an awards show a week before, and all Kendall can think of while he has the most horrifying conversation of his life is the way that James’s hands moved over the front of his dress slacks, the way his mouth was hot and tight around his dick.  
  
And the way Kendall had been completely okay letting himself get debased in a highly public place, because it was James, because James was _forever_.  
  
Kendall and James were supposed to be forever.  
  
James knows all of this because Kendall tells him. Kendall’s never had a problem voicing every single thought that flits through his pretty blond head, and the day everything ends isn’t any different. Kendall tells James what it felt like to have James’s mouth around his cock the same way he’s always told James things, from the story of how he lost his virginity to the mundane details of the itchy bug bite on his ankle. The same-  
  
Except for the way his face looks when he says it. He’s wearing this expression that James has never seen Kendall wear before, not once, in over twenty years of friendship.  
  
And then it hits him.  
  
It’s betrayal.  
  
James never recovers from that, not really.  
  
He tries. He really does. But he can’t. He can’t face Kendall, day in and day out. Whenever he closes his eyes, he can see that expression on his face; the shock, the upset, the open wound.  
  
James dumps the band a month later.

 

 

 

\---

  
Time doesn’t always lessen pain. It just makes you better able to live with it.  
  
“This is a bad idea. This is actually the worst idea you’ve ever had. Don’t do it.”  
  
“Carlos, it’ll be fine.”  
  
James examines the lettering on the doorframe. A graceful X, a stately O with a line through the center, and a weirdly italic K. He has no idea what it means. _Xok_ doesn’t sound like any word he knows.  
  
Carlos makes a frustrated noise. “It won’t. He doesn’t want anything to do with you, James.”  
  
“How do you know that?” James asks, ignoring the dip in his stomach at the very idea. He’s nervous enough about this already. He doesn’t need Carlos’s negativity sending him on a roller coaster ride of guilt and shame and utter terror.  
  
“Because I’ve talked to him about it. Extensively.” Carlos sighs. “He hates you, man. Can you even blame him for it?”  
  
 _Not really_ , James thinks. But he raises his hand and knocks on the door of the clapboard house anyway.  
  
A guy with mussed hair and a stained sweatshirt answers, blinking blearily up at James like he doesn’t quite know what to make of him. Hopefully, he asks, “Pizza?”  
  
James frowns. “No. Uh. Is Kendall Knight here?”  
  
The guy’s face falls. “Yeah, whatever. Prez lives straight up the stairs, third room on the left.”  
  
“James,” Carlos’s voice is tinny in his ear, full of warning. He is James’s tornado siren. He is his emergency broadcast system telling him not to fuck up.  
  
James hangs up on him.  
  
The stairs creak under his feet. He grips the banister hard, palms clammy.  
  
Carlos is right, obviously. This really is the worst idea he’s ever had. But James has too much pride to turn tail and run back to California now.  
  
The door to Kendall’s room is big, thick, old wood, scratched to hell and adorned with a golden sheriff’s star. James stands outside, shuffling from foot to foot.  
  
Screw pride. There’s still time to turn around. He fingers his cellphone, smooth, familiar plastic, with Carlos just on the other end of the line. Maybe he should have just, like, _called_ Kendall first. Tested the water and everything. When he initially made this decision, James dismissed that idea immediately. Cellphones killed grand romantic gestures.  
  
Now it makes sense. Why get humiliated in public? Take the coward’s way out, a thousand miles away.  
  
Just. He isn’t sure Kendall would pick up.  
  
They tried to stay in touch for a while, once the band immolated. Kendall ran away to finish up his education in Minnesota, hoping to eke out a future without Big Time Rush, without his best friends. James was incredibly annoyed about it, because everyone knew it was his fault that Kendall rabbited. Logan and Carlos didn’t let up with the nagging for a long, long time after. Still, he tried to check in, and he and Kendall managed to have a couple of awkward conversations.  
  
James wanted to stay friends. He wanted to stay _civil_.  
  
Then Kendall told James’s new girlfriend that he hoped she didn’t catch herpes.  
  
James stopped talking to Kendall after that.  
  
That Kendall never called again was only part of the reason. Probably.  
  
James remakes his decision, gathers his courage close. He is a popstar. He is famous. He can open a door. His fingers grip the knob.  
  
It’s funny how he doesn’t think to knock. Old habits die hard.  
  
James really, really wishes he’d knocked. Maybe if he had, the first he sees of Kendall in over five years wouldn’t be an in-depth study of the way he’s got his tongue shoved down some girl’s throat. James stands there, awkward, watching the whole thing in flashes of pale skin and moans reverberating clear as sound bites in his ears. He is turned to stone, stuck in the doorframe for a beat, for two, drinking in the shape of Kendall’s body, thicker now, more masculine.  
  
It scares him, how much his best friend has changed.  
  
Kendall’s fingers, callus-hardened from guitar, palm the girl’s ass. She moans again, and, _shit_. James clears his throat before he does something really moronic, like pitch a tent in his jeans.  
  
Two naked, sweaty bodies turn his way, and when they part James has got a crystal clear view of Kendall’s beryl eyes and the way they harden. “Oh. It’s you.”  
  
Of all the reactions James expected Kendall to have, this isn’t one of them. He whispers something to the girl, and she laughs and climbs up out of bed. She pulls on a tiny scrap of fabric, underwear that barely covers anything at all, and then she walks towards James, hips swaying. Behind her, Kendall stretches, lavaliere a cold golden spot against his chest. He’s watching the way James’s eyes go wide as the pretty girl sashays up to him, the black lace of her boy shorts framing her tight muscles, her breasts right fucking there.  
  
He wants a reaction, James thinks. His lips purse together. He doesn’t say anything.  
  
The girl reaches past James, gathering up her jeans and a small square of fabric that might be her shirt. She winks once and then makes her way out of the room. Then there is silence.  
  
Not comfortable silence. Hostile quiet, a weighty beast. It threatens to smother them both.  
  
Kendall hops out of bed with more grace than he ever used to manage, and James gets a full on fucking show before he tugs on his boxer shorts and a sweatshirt, Greek letters shifting with the lines of his body. The dark mark of a hickey on his collarbone disappears beneath fabric, but when James blinks, he can see it behind his eyelids, blue-black-blue. He tries to focus on the white skin of Kendall’s knees, so washed of color that James wonders if he ever sees the sun.  
  
When Kendall finally turns to look at him, he is not the clingy boy James remembers.  
  
He is hurt.  
  
He is betrayed.  
  
He is broken.  
  
James doesn’t recognize him anymore.  
  
“What do you want?” Kendall asks, blunt, to the point. He cradles his hands inside the front pocket of his sweatshirt, the shape of his knuckles belying his tight fists.  
  
“I wanted…to see how you were doing,” James says, and it’s a partial truth.  
  
“Yeah?” Kendall’s eyebrows quirk. He never did take James’s advice and get them shaped. “I’m great. Leave now?”  
  
“Hey, don’t be like that.” James takes a step forward, lowering his voice like he’s talking to a rabid dog. This is no longer his best friend, the boy he sang with, the lover he held close, the trembling kid he taught to ice skate.  
  
James closes his eyes and thinks of that, how Kendall stumbled, all shaky steps and a bundle of nerves. James was giving him the imperious look he’d had absolutely perfected at five. He’d yelled, “C’mon already.”  
  
Kendall had frowned at his skates, frustrated. “I don’t know how.”  
  
“What do you mean, you don’t know how?”  
  
“I mean I don’t know how, okay?”  
  
“But you love hockey. You live next to an ice rink. You want to be on a team!” James’s hands were on his little hips. “You have to know how to skate to play hockey, duh.”  
  
“Well I don’t, okay?” Kendall sniffed, cold and embarrassed and miserable.  
  
“You’re not going to learn standing there.” James tugged at his tiny arm, “Come on.”  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“Teaching you. _Duh_.”  
  
And Kendall had beamed that brilliant, crooked smile at him, and-  
  
No. James bats the memory away. He can’t fixate on that, on the smile he hasn’t seen in so long now that it makes him die a little inside.  
  
“Come on, Kendall. We’re bros.”  
  
Kendall lifts his lavaliere, dangles the letters on his neck. “I’ve got new bros, now.”  
  
“Dude-“ James glances around helplessly. “I miss you.”  
  
It’s not a lie. He does. He misses Kendall so badly that it hurts.  
  
The exact minute he realized he’d made a wretched mistake in leaving Kendall behind, he was fucking some girl, soft and slow. She was quiet, so quiet, like she was used to keeping all her sounds hidden while James moved inside her. In that moment, he missed Kendall more than anything; he missed the noise he used to make, missed the way words tumbled from his mouth like he couldn’t help it. He missed the sweet taste of Kendall on his lips and the way he’d fold over with a sigh, scrape his teeth across James’s throat and then boss him into delivering an orgasm.  
  
The realization started with sex, but after that, it was a floodgate of _everything_. James didn’t just miss the slap of flesh and the crescendo of the love they made, but Kendall himself; stupid, mischievous, golden. He was abruptly right back where he’d been before he dumped Kendall on his ass, wondering how he’d been bewitched into loving him this way, _desperately_.  
  
He’d wake up in the morning and wait for the sound of Kendall’s voice, lit with laughter. He’d wait for him to walk into his bedroom, his hair a glowing corona of gold. Then he’d recall that Kendall was a million miles away.  
  
It cut, and it burned, and James was done for, done for, gone, baby, gone.  
  
Love, yeah, fuck, it’s a killer. It sneaks stealthily through the cracks and holes of a person’s life, the quiet moments and the loud, the good times, the bad times too, and no one is ever ready to feel its teeth on their spine. James booked the next flight out to the motherland posthaste, all to see his very best friend who, apparently, wishes he’d stay put.  
  
“That’s too bad,” Kendall bites out, his anger burning bright and hot. “What am I supposed to do about it?”  
  
“I don’t know; maybe tell me you missed me too? Dude. We’re supposed to be friends, Kendall.”  
  
And hey, hi, they are. So what if they haven’t really engaged in anything like communication since the whole herpes incident? They managed for the month the band struggled onwards, and James still lies through his teeth that they’re besties every time BTR comes up in an interview with anyone.  
  
He’s said it for People, and Pop Tiger, and Star, and if millions of people have read it in US Weekly it must be true.  
  
James grabs for Kendall’s shoulder, but misses when he ducks and weaves.  
  
“Don’t touch me. Not ever.” Kendall drips poison. He has arsenic and belladonna in his gums.  
  
“Kendall.” James hates the way Kendall’s name sits on his tongue, the pathetic break between the syllables that means his control is already slipping away, lickety-split. He’s getting mad, which isn’t going to help anything. “I didn’t come here to fight with you.”  
  
“Then what, exactly, did you come here for, James? Because you missed me? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Kendall’s voice doesn’t shake or quaver or tremble, but his hands do as he reaches for a shiny ring of keys that has tumbled haphazardly onto the floor. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I don’t actually care.”  
  
Kendall’s not very good at hiding how very pissed off he is, and that’s not shocking at all. He only knows fire. Kendall turns people into fuses and then leaves them to burn, to be great or fizzle out, but there’s always some kind of spark involved. And he himself is living flame, dynamic, unfettered, so much anger sizzling right beneath the surface.  
  
Fuck, James really has missed him.  
  
“Who was the girl?” James asks, because the question is solid ground. He’s used to asking about his friends’ conquests, used to the high fives and the sly smiles, used to the shy reluctance to provide too many details.  
  
Kendall isn’t exactly up to smiling, but he gives a halfhearted shrug, and that’s something, right?  
  
Except, okay, James takes the gesture as a _doesn’t matter_ , and it’s not until Kendall’s halfway out the room that he realizes Kendall means he doesn’t _know_.  
  
“Hey, wait, where are you going?”  
  
James follows Kendall out the door, out into sticky-floored halls that resonate with strange voices. Kendall says, “I’ve got a house to run, parties to plan, you know. A life.”  
  
“I’ve got a life too,” James objects, and a split second after it has left his lips he thinks that oops, defensive is not the way he wants to play this.  
  
Kendall huffs, all grumpy and irritated. “I noticed.”  
  
James has a snappy retort on his tongue, he does, except then some kid runs up to Kendall and asks him a series of rapid-fire questions about a keg or five, and it seems to be the running theme of the day. By the time they’ve made it downstairs, at least eight guys have approached Kendall with a variety of questions and requests, and it’s weird, seeing all these dudes that James has never met look up to Kendall in askance.  
  
It’s only then that the significance of the sheriff’s star and the word prez sink in; Kendall dominates this place. Of course he does. And of course all the guys here admire him when James has tried so damn hard to dismiss anything admirable about Kendall for so very long.  
  
He shifts and he squirms, uncomfortable with how very unobservant he’s been, but no one even notices James Diamond, household name, writhing with humiliation at Kendall’s side. It’s like he’s fading into the background. He gets a nod or a _hey, man_ , or maybe even a quick intro, because Kendall’s mom raised him polite. But more than that?  
  
James is a nonentity.  
  
He follows Kendall outside, into dim midday sunlight. It’s September in Minnesota, and the air still tastes thickly of late summer, of fireflies left uncaught and leaves not quite ready to surrender the good fight. James battles off such an intense surge of homesickness that his lungs freeze up, and it’s ridiculous, because this place isn’t his home anymore. He belongs with palm trees and jewel-toned swimming pools, sea salt and the hypnotic twist of overpasses. He belongs in California, now, only it’s a little sad that he’s not sure when he started thinking of home as a place instead of a place by his best friends’ sides.  
  
“Were you planning on leaving, yet?” Kendall asks, brandishing a car key from that shiny ring of his in front of James’s face. “Because you’re not coming with me.”  
  
“Yes, I am,” James replies automatically.  
  
“No, you’re not.”  
  
“Yes. I am,” James insists stubbornly. He argues because he’s good at it, he’s good at pushing buttons; everyone says so. James Diamond can turn you on and James Diamond can piss you off and James Diamond can flick a switch and make you a star, or just as easily stamp it all out again. He’s used to getting what he wants, because he’s fucking famous, and so what if no one even remembers that it’s all because of Kendall Knight?  
  
Not even really James Diamond, not anymore.  
  
James slides into the passenger seat of Kendall’s beat up lemon of a car before Kendall can even raise a real objection. He comments, “This thing is a sty.”  
  
“I’m living the best way I know how, okay?” Kendall mutters, and James knows what that means. He’s probably still got money from the band, but it’s all being funneled into his education, or helping his mom out with bills, or Katie’s college fund.  
  
There isn’t any such thing as a knight in shining armor, but Kendall has spent his whole life trying his damndest to be one for his family.  
  
“Where are we going?” James asks, already twisting the radio dial.  
  
Kendall’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Costco. We need cups. And jello. And beer.”  
  
“Don’t you have minions for that, Mr. President?”  
  
A muscle in Kendall’s jaw twitches. “The Rush Chair has everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I pitch in when I can.”  
  
“I thought fraternities weren’t supposed to like, party anymore. Aren’t you supposed to all be academia, academia?”  
  
“Hey. Chi Phi Kappa is one of the oldest, most prestigious fraternities in the US. Our brothers’ average GPA is 3.9.”  
  
James would be impressed, if things like grades had ever impressed him. “Right. So, work hard, party hard?”  
  
Kendall actually kind of grins. “Exactly.”  
  
The grin slides right off his face when James hits some pop radio station and, oh look. It’s him.  
  
He goes to switch the channel, but Kendall waves his fingers in the air. “Do your write all your songs?”  
  
“Most of them,” James says carefully. They used to talk about that, when the band was still together, about getting James’s music out there. Kendall helped him pen down lyrics every once in a while, but James has never been able to bring himself to get them on air, even though they’re good.  
  
“I figured.” Kendall pauses. Then, “All those love songs must be for some lucky girl.”  
  
If the tone of his voice is more than a little bitter, James decides not to say anything about it. “Nah. Fictional love is a lot easier to write about than real…whatever.”  
  
Kendall jerks his head up and down, eyes firmly trained on the car parked in front of them. “Yeah, you always have been good at faking it, I guess.”  
  
“Wait, that’s not-“ James takes a deep breath. “I never faked it with you.”  
  
“Really?” Kendall’s face is carefully blank. His knuckles are white. “Could have fooled me.”  
  
“Don’t be this way. So much time has gone by. I thought-“  
  
“You thought, what? That this was something I could get over?” Kendall laughs, the sound wrong, full of disparagement and self-loathing. He’s driving now, and James hadn’t even noticed them moving, hadn’t realized that Kendall had pushed into drive.  
  
They are whipping around corners, going too fast, but he’s not worried. Somewhere, in the depths of James’s soul, he knows that Kendall would never hurt him on purpose.  
  
Kendall barrels on, “It’s not just about you, James. It was never just about you.”  
  
“What then?”  
  
“I don’t fucking know, how about friendship and love and all the things you’re supposed to trust in when you’re a kid? I don’t believe in any of it anymore.”  
  
Kendall slams on the brakes, narrowly avoiding a fluffy tailed bunny that had the misfortune of deciding to cross the street at the wrong moment. He swerves, and the car shudders, and James is still not scared.  
  
Maybe he’s stupider than people give him credit for.  
  
“Losing you, maybe that alone I could’ve stood. Losing all of that? Everything I ever had faith in? What do you think?”  
  
James thinks Kendall has a penchant for melodrama. He remembers the days after he got dumped by Jo, when he hung out the window and said that all of his dreams had died. This has to be the same thing, but it’s weird that the wounds still seem so raw. Years have passed, but Kendall still looks every bit as injured as the last day James saw him.  
  
“I’m never going to get over it. I’m never going to get over you.”  
  
“You’re being ridiculous. Don’t say that. You don’t know-”  
  
“Fuck you,” Kendall spits, and okay, Carlos said that Kendall hated him. James hadn’t doubted that. He just never realized how deep that hate went.  
  
Right now, he can see it in his eyes. If Kendall had the chance to go back and change things, he wouldn’t choose James again.  
  
He would never have dated him.  
  
He would never have even befriended him.  
  
There, swimming in the animosity, James can see that Kendall wouldn’t even take the chance to be introduced to James again, back in preschool. He would turn tail and run.  
  
It kind of hurts, embodying another person’s regret. More so because James doesn’t regret the decision he made, at least, not really. Not all of it. He hates that he said such hurtful words to Kendall, and he hates that Kendall is obviously still hurting, but. If he had the chance to do it again, he probably would.  
  
James cannot regret choosing himself.  
  
There’s no way he’s ever going to be able to explain that to Kendall without sounding like a total tool. He is a giant tool, really. In retrospect, assuming he had to drop Kendall to further his own dreams wasn’t the best way to have gone about it. He thought he had to live this lifestyle, thought he had to occupy his time with shallow girls and adoring fans and pretty boys whose legs spread too easily. He thought that popstars who had already found their one true love could never make it in the industry. He thought a whole lot of wrong things, and in the end, the only good thing that came of it is singing. James’s career is the most important thing in the world to him.  
  
This small part of James thinks that it has to be, because he has nothing else left. Not even the best friend he thought he’d keep until he met his deathbed.  
  
“Fuck you,” Kendall repeats, chest heaving, eyes bright. “Don’t tell me that I don’t know if it’s true. I know it, James. You’re the only person I ever wanted. My whole life, it was just- _you_. And you rejected everything about me. Everything between us!”  
  
The bass of the car’s speakers thuds, filling up the quiet that threatens to swallow James’s shame. He almost missed the last part of Kendall’s tirade, the choked whisper of, “And I hate you. I fucking hate you, alright?”  
  
“Kendall-“  
  
“I still don’t even know why you’re here.”  
  
James opens his mouth. He didn’t come here _expressly_ for the purpose of getting Kendall back, exactly, but maybe the idea’s been flitting around in his head. How does he say that, though? “I- Hollywood is fake, and awful, and-“  
  
“Is that what that was? Were you trying to protect me from Hollywood?”  
  
James wishes he could say yes, but. People don’t always leave for noble reasons.  
  
“No. I was trying to protect myself from- all of it. You were so clingy and I wasn’t ready and- it wasn’t working out.”  
  
“So you said,” Kendall replies, and his voice is toneless, drained of anger.  
  
“But I want to make it up to you,” James rushes to say, because Kendall keeps driving him off track. “I want to be friends again. I want-“  
  
“Do you regret it?” Kendall sounds like he already knows the answer, which is great, because the answer is so complex that James isn’t sure how to put it into words. Kendall certainly isn’t waiting for that. “What, exactly, do you think there is to make up? I was so stupid. I’m never going to be able to forgive myself for that, and I’m never going to be able to forgive you. So. Let’s just…not.”  
  
“I’m not leaving,” James tells him firmly.  
  
“Fine. Whatever. Stay for the party. See. If I. Care,” Kendall pops his lips on the last word. They don’t talk the rest of the way to the store, or while they’re shopping, or on the way back home.  
  
James feels like he’s walking next to a ghost.

 

 

 

\---

  
Say what you will about Chi Phi Kappa’s academic achievements, but they sure as fuck know how to throw a party.  
  
The music throbs, it thumps, it is overlaid with laughter and catcalls and triumphant whoops, and James is a _high class_ popstar, man. It’s been ages since the last time he’s had to deal with this, with beer sticky wood floors, too much enthusiasm, and the smell of vomit assaulting his nose.  
  
This is mislaid youth and reckless abandon. This is _awesome_.  
  
James thinks he can readapt really fast.  
  
Kendall’s across the room, wearing a white shirt marked fluorescent yellow with highlighter, a girl on either arm, frat brothers gathered in close to his side. He is the electric blue sizzle of a neon sign, the slow burn of water evaporating off a sun-soaked pavement; he is the silver sparkle of chandelier fireworks and the static-crackle-bass-bang of loud music. Kendall owns this crowd, their affection and their awe, and rightly so.  
  
James can’t tear his eyes away.  
  
Kendall spots his spying almost immediately, and the glare he pins James with is frigid as midwinter, colder than the snowballs they used to pack with ice, the ones that hit hard as a punch to the stomach.  
  
It doesn’t matter. James still stares at him and thinks about getting his dick wet, about the best sex he’s ever had and how it was always with Kendall, Kendall with lust in his eyes and James filling him deep. He used to love to break Kendall down into tiny pieces, to strip away the confidence that Kendall wore like a shield and see the boy underneath it, uncertain and desperate.  
  
James can’t remember why it stopped being enough. Something about being too young, too frightened. Love moved quicker than he wanted, bit him cobra-fast and scared the shit out of him while it permeated his bones.  
  
One of the guys near Kendall laughs long and loud, writing something in fluorescent orange across the esteemed president’s white sleeve. The black lights everywhere make the rather descriptive block letters pop, even from so far away, and all the other brothers by Kendall join in the cackling while the girls look on with faintly amused smirks.  
  
They all have names, probably. James is certain that he was introduced to some of them at one point or another during the night. But he refuses to acknowledge the people who stole his place in Kendall’s life, that occupy the negative space at his side when James is supposed to be the only one comfortably filling the void.  
  
Never mind that James is the one who created the hole in the first place.  
  
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s _crazy_ weird, you look so much like James Diamond,” this girl announces, sidling up to James with a red cup sloshed full of beer clutched in each hand. “What did you say your name was again?”  
  
 _I didn’t_ , James thinks. Out loud, he firmly proclaims. “Jay. It’s Jay.”  
  
“Right. Dude, seriously, the resemblance is uncanny.” She sees where he’s looking. “You can’t be friends with Knight.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Are you kidding me? The guy doesn’t let anyone even talk about that dude. He’s such a notorious slut, right? Kid gets more pussy than god. But if someone he’s fucking even mentions they like Diamond, he kicks them the hell out. No questions asked. Don’t even matter how hot the bitch is.” The girl looks a little put out, like maybe she’s a hot bitch who has been kicked out of Kendall’s room. James watches Kendall chug a beer and feels some sense of weird satisfaction about that.  
  
A fratboy walks up behind the girl, slings an arm around her and says, “Hey, you moving in on my turf?”  
  
“I’m not anyone’s turf,” the girl shoves his arm away and wrinkles her nose, freckles on the tip disappearing between folds of skin.  
  
“Not my type. No offense,” James adds absently, because there is beer dripping down the lines of Kendall’s throat and want thrumming in his bones.  
  
“What’s your type?” The guy asks, challenging.  
  
“Charismatic douchebags with a drinking problem,” James shoots back.  
  
There’s a sudden silence that isn’t exactly silence; some rap artist is cranked way the fuck up and his words are filling every space in the air, but- “Are you making fun of me?”  
  
“No.”  
  
The dude considers this. “Oh. Then you’re in the right place.”  
  
Kendall glances in their direction, and unhappiness blankets his expression. He glowers at James like he was stitched together wrong, like James is fake and unseemly right down to his inseams. Kendall glowers and glares and lets that dirty look linger, right up until another beer is pushed in front of his mouth and he is off and distracted.  
  
Again.  
  
The circle of people surrounding Kendall fluxes and flows. He’s scared off one of the girls who’d been lingering earlier, but he’s got his freed up arm around one of his frat brothers now, his other occupied by a perky redhead. They’re both fawning over him, and it makes James grit his teeth, prickly and on edge.  
  
He never expected Kendall to wait around, pining, obviously. He, of all people, knows that Kendall has never been a prince, or a saint, or at all the kind of person that languishes quietly while awaiting the return of his one true love. Kendall’s always needed to move, to shake, to forge through the bleak, and for every bad memory that chases after him, that clings to his back with gossamer threads, Kendall inevitably does something reckless and stupid; exactly like a child trying to bat off nightmares with a stick.  
  
With his dad it was donning a mask and a literal stick, it was black eyes and broken ribs and a chipped tooth or three. With Jo it was stupid pranks and new hobbies, seeing how far he could go with water balloons and toe picks. And with James, it appears to be semi-anonymous sex.  
  
If only James hadn’t given himself a front row seat, here. He has no idea whether to fist pump or bump his fist right into Kendall’s jaw. He’s never been able to handle jealousy well, and this is no different.  
  
James decides he can’t take it anymore.  
  
He makes his way over to Kendall, who is steadily involved in not paying any attention at all to James. He’s busy talking to this guy - James thinks his name is Bryan, vaguely recalls him asking if he could use a whole bottle of vodka per a packet of jello earlier – who notices James coming long before Kendall does. He grins and announces, “You’ve got company, Knight. I think he wants to join in.”  
  
The girl on Kendall’s other side stares at James like he’s a science project, eyes dancing, the cloth of her white tank top decorated with a familiar superstar signature- the one Kendall practiced over and over again for hockey and then the band- scrawled in blinding yellow across the curve of her breasts.  
  
“Don’t be a dick, Bry,” Kendall chides quietly, and hey, two points for James, he totally remembered the dick’s name.  
  
James’s eyes drag over Kendall, slow and searching. His gaze lingers on the word _fucktard_ scrawled in neon orange just beneath the collar of Kendall’s shirt, and the really bad imitation of the American flag drawn in pink above his belly.  
  
He starts, “Kendall,” but Bryan nuzzles against the curve of Kendall’s throat and says something that sounds a lot like, _c’mon already, hurry up_ , and the girl pressed into the other side of his chest giggles something indecipherable, bored already with James’s existence.  
  
…Wow, that’s new. James may or may not make an indignant noise of protest at that.  
  
Kendall leans in close, close enough that James can feel it when he breathes. He smells like Heineken and stale chips, but also like Kendall and home. He meets James’s eyes evenly and says, “Go back to Hollywood.”  
  
Then he takes his friends upstairs, probably to bed, and James spends the rest of the night drinking shitty beer with a group of freshman girls who keep telling him he looks _just like_ James Diamond. He falls asleep curled up on a ratty couch that smells like stale pizza and feet, and when he dreams, it’s about Kendall; ten years old and smiling big as the world, saying, “ _We’ll be best friends forever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever. And ever…”_

 

 

 

  
\---

  
James wakes up with pillow creases on his face and a familiar knit afghan draped around his shoulders. Kendall’s grandma made it, back before her arthritis kicked in, back before she died.  
  
James remembers that funeral, remembers how Kendall hunched in on himself, turning miniature in James’s arms, but outright refusing to cry. They sang _You Are My Sunshine_ at the burial, and sometimes James still finds himself humming _you make me happy, when skies are gray_ if he’s feeling really down.  
  
The afghan didn’t come alone; James turns to the left and there’s a familiar head of blond.  
  
In Hollywood, people associate blondes with bleach, with big tits and plastic and easy fucking lays, but the color always makes James think of home, of safety, of never-ending love. He’s dated more than his share of fair haired boys and girls because of it, gone through all the precious metals, from golden to platinum to silver. Not all of their carpets matched the drapes, and very few of them ever made him feel exactly what Kendall made him feel, but James has never quite been able to kick the idea.  
  
Kendall’s sitting with his knees to his chest, a hole in the denim on his left thigh revealing sickly pale skin and patchwork gold hair underneath.  
  
James’s first instinct is to reach out, but he stops himself at the last second, remembering that it’s not allowed. He croaks, “Hey.”  
  
Kendall turns. He makes a pretty profile, and for the briefest moment he looks so sad that James wants desperately to injure whoever made him feel this way. Then he realizes that it was him, and Kendall quirks the distant cousin of a smile, and James burrows further into the afghan to hide from it.  
  
“Are you planning on moving in, or…?” Kendall asks mildly.  
  
“Maybe,” James retorts. “I’m feeling pretty scholarly.”  
  
Kendall climbs to his feet slow, as if he’s been sitting in the same position for a while, knees cracking. Standing, he becomes a silhouette of a man-boy, outlined by the golden autumn light shining through the window, wavering like a flame. He says, “I’ve got class. Don’t be here when I get back.”

 

 

 

\---

  
So Kendall doesn’t want to be around him. That’s fine. James can handle rejection gracefully.  
  
Except, no, he really actually can’t.  
  
He dicks around Minnesota for a few days, visiting places he never really meant to come back to. The park where he played when he was little, the lake where he learned how to swim. The bleachers behind his old high school.  
  
Kendall Knight’s former front porch.  
  
Reminiscing makes him wistful, or sad, or both. He thinks nostalgia is really just a nice way of saying the past still haunts you, so he goes back home and cowers beneath his mom’s favorite threadbare chenille blankets, a relic from the days when she was still trying to build her company from the ground up. She keeps it because she’s nostalgic, because she’s haunted, but James has never been able to draw his head out of his own ass long enough to ask _by what_.  
  
He flips through five hundred channels and settles on crappy reality show after procedural crime drama after charity telethon, and mostly the deepest thought he has all afternoon is why celebrities can’t think up something more fun, like a charity fuckathon.  
  
Then he remembers that he is a celebrity and maybe he should hop on that idea.  
  
By day three, he’s marathonning reruns of The OC on Soapnet.  
  
By day five, his mom kicks him out of the house for _moping_.  
  
When James yells that he’s doing _nothing of the sort_ at the rich mahogany of their mansion’s heavy front door, she yells, “Then your happy face needs some serious work, young man!” and refuses to let him back inside.  
  
Something about the idea of surrender springs this thickness in his throat, a legged thing that wriggles up and down, bounces around his stomach and then slithers its way up again. James tries to swallow around it, but that accomplishes nothing at all. So James sets about being useful, in lieu of heading back to California and admitting defeat. He does a couple of mall appearances and radio interviews, because he’s bored, and talking about himself makes him feel better.  
  
Or it usually does.  
  
Every time he closes his eyes, he imagines Kendall’s hot beer-breath against the skin of his throat and his confident, easygoing interview voice scampers off to hide. James hasn’t stammered his way through so many questions since he first started in the music biz, and his manager has one or two choice words to say about it.  
  
James never really listens to his manager anyway.  
  
He runs into this chick he dated for a month during his sophomore year, working as a checkout girl at the Sherwood Market, which is stop number eighty nine on the James Diamond melancholia tour. It’s weird to find her there, because he remembers that she was smart, way too smart to be with him, and when they get to talking he finds out she still is. She’s one more of the overeducated underemployed, but she doesn’t actually seem too upset about it.  
  
“I’m young, I’m able-bodied, I’ve got friends in town…life isn’t bad,” she tells him, smiling, and how is that fair? James is young, gainfully employed, and super-hot besides, and he feels like life is kind of _awful_.  
  
He stares at this girl that he used to adore, searching for her secret. James wonders if her heart has ever been broken. If she’s ever done something as stupid as breaking it herself.  
  
Probably not.  
  
He talks to her for a few minutes, admiring the way she gestures emphatically with delicate hands. Saints shackle her wrist, and a cross bisects her clavicle, weighing her down with all of the good lord’s grace and glory. She’s got all the devil’s mischief, though, bats her eyes at James and invites him out to dinner, or maybe just the storage closet in the back of the store.  
  
James turns her down, because…Because, why? Kendall? Kendall doesn’t want him.  
  
But James still wants Kendall.  
  
It sucks. He was actually doing a really good job, before, living his life and pretending he wasn’t the biggest asshole who ever walked the earth. Hollywood was bespoke for James Diamond, or maybe it was vice versa, but who the hell cared? James was thriving, better at being a celebrity than he ever has been at being a real person. It’s easier that way, belonging to everyone, to the whole wide fucking world, than to limit yourself to one or two solid, warm people. Audiences don’t have expectations, or at least not any that James ever felt like he really had to measure up to. So yeah, he was back in California, living the high life, single and fancy free and totally absent of cares, and it was good. Better than good.  
  
A little empty, maybe, because Carlos was off Carlosing around the world, and Logan was working crazy impossible hours while he tried to save the Earth one patient at a time, but it was hard to be too lonely with the crosshairs of a camera lens trained on him twenty four seven.  
  
Okay, yes, he was acutely aware of the Kendall-sized hole at his side, but that was natural. James’s whole life, Kendall was …there. Smirking. Planning. Plotting. Leading. At school. After school. They slept over at each other’s houses practically year round, so Kendall was there at night, too. When the dark crept over James and threatened to drown him in bad dreams, Kendall’s scrawny arms were the ones that drove the nightmares away. There was never a time when he wasn’t invading James’s personal space.  
  
Except it wasn’t an invasion at all, because way back when, James had no idea what to do with himself when he wasn’t breathing the same pocket of air as Kendall. They were best friends, and that’s what best friends did, and the first time they kissed, it felt like one more badge of honor for their spectacular friendship.  
  
Kendall was making a Mother’s Day bouquet for his mom that day, picking wildflowers from the side of the road, plucking blossoms of all kinds from their neighbors’ gardens. The finished product was a motley assortment of flowers splayed in every direction, a mongrel of a thing that made Kendall beam with pride. James was possessed by his smile, or his heart, or the hypnotic scent of Queen Anne’s Lace. There was some kind of witchery at work, he’s sure, because he’d never once thought about kissing Kendall before, and afterwards, he could never quite shake the desire to do it again.  
  
He didn’t get to for a while, of course. Their first kiss was daisy petals and gravel beneath James’s feet, but their first date didn’t happen for a long, long time after.  
  
See, back then, Kendall didn’t like boys.  
  
That was ancient history though, and James had a stretch of too-blue sky overhead, Hollywood, baby, all the stars and city lights. He had girls begging to get down on their knees for him, and if maybe he had a thing for blondes, no one ever said anything about it, and if maybe he wanted it rough from boys with dimpled smiles too, they didn’t comment on that either. He was glamor and shine and whizz-bang-pop, his smile a magic trick and his voice the golden ticket that everyone just had to get their hands on.  
  
James was doing so well, making it on his own, getting everything he’d ever wanted. Then he fucked that girl – the mousy little thing with her long, long legs and her voice in absentia – and he was hit by the sick knowledge that what he wanted had changed.  
  
James is tired of being touched and over-fucked, sick of trying to fill space inside of him with a kind of warmth that doesn’t mean much anymore. His heart is a hearth with no fire, no heat.  
  
He might as well be empty inside.  
  
When he thinks about that night, that girl, it is an epiphany, a eureka moment followed by a deluge of eureka moments. It’s only when he’s honest with himself, which James rarely is, that he can acknowledge how Kendall had been creeping through the cracks and holes in his California dream practically since the day he left.  
  
But honesty is for suckers, and James could ignore the way Kendall ghosted behind his eyelids at inopportune times, from the shift of knuckle-bone beneath the pale skin of his fingers when he was trying to jam with the James Diamond backup band to the resonance of his voice down every back alley and side street in Los Angeles. If he chased the familiar curve of a proud spine down a broad boulevard once or twice, it wasn’t because he thought those vertebrae belonged to Kendall at all; he just really liked good posture. And at night, oh, at night, if there was the imprint of Kendall’s head on his chest, the echo of his heartbeat pulsing against James’s hand, well, then that didn’t mean anything at all.  
  
James doesn’t dwell on any of this, not even a little bit, but he’s still out of it enough that he ends up on the front porch of his house without knowing how he’s gotten there.  
  
Inside, his mom is curled up on a couch, a book cradled in her lap. She spends a lot of nights up, reading, and James thinks it’s because she can’t stand an empty house.  
  
He tries to sneak past her, but he doesn’t quite make it.  
  
“Your dad called.” Brooke crosses her arms over the cover of her novel, and they’re thinner than the last time James saw her. It’s been a while. “He wants to know when you’re coming by to visit.”  
  
“I was thinking this side of never.”  
  
His mom presses her lips together. She does not tell him to reconsider. She does not say a word. She is over being angry at James’s dad’s indiscretions, over him in a way that James will never be; his father is blood.  
  
He never had to carry that burden alone, when he was younger, never had to resent his dad’s mistakes in silence. Then his mom was still pissed as fuck, then he had a whole new career to distract him.  
  
Then he had Kendall and all his own daddy issues for company.  
  
Before he ever was master and commander of a frat house, Kendall Knight was president of the shitty dads hate group, and he was there whenever James needed to vent.  
  
“When we grow up, we’ll be better men than both of them,” Kendall swore after every tirade, and James believed him. They would grow up to be nothing like their fathers, simply because Kendall said so.  
  
Looking back, James wonders how he could have ever believed that there was magic in that mantra. This is fate, this is destiny, James was always going to turn into an uncaring bastard, minus the uncaring part.  
  
Believe him, he’d like nothing more than not to care.

 

 

 

\---

  
The thing he never says about why he broke up with Kendall; it wasn’t only that Kendall was clingy.  
  
It was also how James wanted to cling back.

 

 

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

James comes back to Chi Phi Kappa on a rainy Saturday, and a bunch of unashamedly plastered frat brothers are doing some kind of dance in the downpour. They stomp their feet and scream at the sky, and once James figures out what they’re doing he decides that it’s not even a little bit politically correct of them, but it does look like they’re having fun. He can’t remember the last time he did something crazy and stupid, other than getting on a plane to Minnesota to see Kendall, and that hasn’t really been even a smidgen of enjoyable.  
  
Behind the house, there’s this old, sprawling porch, splintered wood with peeling paint that leads down to crumbling brickwork. Rotted terraces hang thick with ivy, and it almost looks as if it was purposely shepherded into burgeoning on up the side of the house like that, but James comes from wealth. He knows what careful yard work, the kind a person has to pay for, looks like. It was probably all very beautiful, once.  
  
Kendall is sitting on a rickety plastic chair, an open text book that he clearly is not reading propped on his lap.  
  
It’s not the safest place he could be, exactly. The sky is black and cracked, splintered with lightning that never quite touches the ground. It turns the air static, electricity sparking across the surface of James’s skin, the hair on his arms standing on end. There is no rain, though, and he can see the appeal of storm watching.  
  
James knows all about harsh beauty.  
  
Kendall doesn’t look up when he approaches, boots heavy on cracked wood, but he must know that James is there. He asks icily, “Are you ever leaving?” and James can feel the frost creeping up his spine.  
  
When they first met, he hated Kendall, from his chocolate stained mouth to the messy smudges of finger-paint on his hands. He was grimy and unkempt while James had started the day with a blowout from his mom. They couldn’t have been more different.  
  
Now, in retrospect, James thinks most of his loathing came from his gut feeling; he somehow knew from the second he and Kendall met that he would lose him. He says quietly, “Not quite yet.”  
  
The thick, dark clouds overhead are patchy at the edges, failing to conceal coral streaks of light, the sky dripping magma. It’s one of the most surreal stormy sunsets James has ever seen, but it pales in comparison to the plush curve of Kendall’s lips, and all the unspoken words that rest there. “What are you waiting for?”  
  
“You.”  
  
Kendall peers up at him, and his eyes are still the greenest thing James has ever seen. He used to spend hours in bed, or over a dinner table, or in the sound booth cataloguing the many, many shades webbed across Kendall’s irises, moss to hunter to olive, forest to shamrock to sea. The amount of time he’s invested in staring deep into Kendall’s eyes would be embarrassing, if James could ever be convinced to admit to it out loud.  
  
“Fine. You have me. I’m your captive audience.” Kendall props his elbows on the table, and it’s appalling, how there isn’t a trace of sarcasm in his words, but they still make James flinch. “Regale me with tales of how kickass you are so we can stop doing this.”  
  
“Stop doing what?”  
  
“Pretending everything is fine?” Kendall’s voice is dull, empty as all the promises James made and broke.  
  
“I don’t think you’ve been pretending anything like that,” James bites back the rest of the words on his tongue, the hurt that will sound exactly like an insult when it hits the air.  
  
Kendall cocks an eyebrow. “You think we’re friends, you said so, before. Which, how deluded are you, James? We haven’t talked in…years.”  
  
He rakes a hand through his hair and it sticks up in tiny golden tufts, a fauxhawk that only stands on end for a few seconds before settling limply back into place. Even the lines of his shoulders are tired, and James is sorry for that. He’s sorry for how awful everything is between them, and he wishes he’d known how to avoid letting it devolve into this. He never set out to hurt Kendall, not ever; he couldn’t even comprehend it. But ending things between them would always have been this way, he thinks, because bad breakups are never bad because of the hate.  
  
It’s the love that makes everything go awry. Residual, overwhelming, without anywhere to go. Love that warps into something horrible, something destroyed; that is the mark of a bad, bad breakup.  
  
James pulls back the nearest plastic lawn chair. He sits right at the edge, wary of all the things that go down on it when he’s not around. Fratboys are totally into orgies, right? He could legit be sitting in a pool of like, syphilis.  
  
He says, “But I still know everything about you.”  
  
Kendall rolls his eyes skyward, huffs something that is almost a laugh. “You know everything about who I used to be.”  
  
“You’re still Kendall,” James insists. “I’m still James.”  
  
“You’re still the asshole that broke my heart.”  
  
“Yeah, well. Maybe I don’t want to be him anymore.” James drums his fingers against his knees. “Dude, I can’t push you into forgiving me. Or hanging out with me. Or being my friend again. But I’m trying to be a part of your life here. That should count for something.”  
  
“You really believe that, don’t you,” Kendall says, not at all a question. “You would think after so long that the depths of your self-centeredness would stop being such a fucking surprise, but here I am. Shocked out of my mind, because you think trying means something. You want to know what _trying_ is, James?”  
  
James’s stomach is a hard knot. He doesn’t think he’s going to like what he’s about to hear.  
  
He listens anyway.  
  
Kendall says, “Trying is sticking with the band for an entire month, smiling so hard it hurts because even damaged you want your best friend to succeed.”  
  
Kendall says, “Trying is calling on every major holiday, starting up one conversation after a-fucking-nother in a desperate play to, hey, stay friends, even though you’re getting ignored or worse, hung up on.”  
  
Kendall says, “Trying is sitting across from you when our parents held that reunion, that Thanksgiving dinner thing, and watching your date stick her tongue down your throat throughout the whole damn thing.”  
  
Mildly, James objects, “You left before dessert,” because he remembers that. It was the first Thanksgiving after the band took a nosedive, and Kendall skipped out on pie.  
  
Sacrilege.  
  
“I was sick to my stomach,” Kendall replies. “I tried to be your friend so many times. But you only want me when it’s on your terms, James.”  
  
 _That’s not true_ is what James wants to say, but Kendall might have a point.  
  
He didn’t always ignore Kendall’s calls on purpose, those first few months. Not always, but often. It was hard to talk to him. Kendall inevitably sounded wounded, in a way that made James’s heart twinge. And James didn’t like the guilt each call saddled him with, back then.  
  
He figured that once enough time had passed, they’d get back into a groove. Everything would stop feeling so forced, less ex-y and more best friend-y. Then Kendall’s calls stopped coming, and James was still pissed about the allusion to his dick being all diseased. James thought maybe space would help with the whole time thing, but then all that space and all that time grew scary teeth and claws, and what was James supposed to do about that?  
  
Kendall was always the one who fought off all his monsters.  
  
Thunder cracks overhead, so loud that James is on his feet, darting towards Kendall to- what? Protect him? Kendall hasn’t even moved. He’s nature boy supreme, enthralled by the storm, and he’s never really been scared of the things that normal people know to fear.  
  
James tells him, “Kendall…I fucked up.”  
  
Lightning strikes, loud, hot, a few blocks down. James nearly jumps out of his sneakers.  
  
Kendall glances up at him then.  
  
He replies, “I know.”

 

 

 

\---

  
“James. Just come back home.”  
  
“I told you it was a bad idea,” Carlos hollers over the line, and James thinks about punching him so hard the next time they meet.  
  
“He’s got a point,” Logan continues, a fond smile in his voice. If he and Carlos weren’t straighter than slide rules, James would totally tell them to just go fuck already. Those two are so utterly, ridiculously, platonically in love that James isn’t the only one who thinks it. He’s heard more than one random ask, “Hey, hey, are you knocking boots or can you only breathe if you’re touching each other?”  
  
Mostly it makes James jealous, because he used to be like that with them, and with Kendall. Then he ruined everything, and yeah, Logan and Carlos didn’t up and abandon him, but it changed things. The fanfrickingtastic dynamic that characterized their friendship soured, at least where it pertained to James. They’re still tight as fuck, but sometimes they turn around and look at him like he’s the great destroyer, and most of the time James can’t even blame them for it.  
  
They’ve stayed close to Kendall, too, and they’ve had to live through all of his pain.  
  
“Does he? Why? Has Kendall said something?” James prompts, fingers clenching tight around his phone.  
  
Logan gets all lecture-y. “Kendall doesn’t talk to us about you. He wouldn’t do that.”  
  
“He sometimes does that,” Carlos mutters.  
  
“Come on, Logan. He has to have said _something_.” James refuses to acknowledge that he might be so insignificant that Kendall isn’t even commenting on his presence.  
  
Logan pauses, his steady, familiar breathing on the other end of the line a small comfort. “He said…he said that his frat brothers think you’re a lightweight.”  
  
“They think what now?” James is insulted. That’s total libel. He can hold his liquor like a champ, okay, he’s gone through ten vodka martinis in a night without even getting a buzz.  
  
Or much of a buzz.  
  
He was still standing, and that’s got to count for something, right?  
  
“He said you came to a party and had like, one beer.” Logan sounds proud, and that’s totally the med student in him, supporting James’s healthy life choices.  
  
“You’re seriously a letdown to Hollywood Party Kings of Hollywood everywhere,” Carlos yells, less than proud, and there are ensuing noises that make James think he’s grappling for the phone.  
  
“We’re the only Hollywood Party Kings of Hollywood, Carlos,” James replies loudly.  
  
Carlos retorts, “Then you’re seriously a letdown to _me_.”  
  
“Next party I go to, I’ll show everyone the definition of a good time,” James promises.  
  
“The next party you go to better be out here,” Logan announces, having wrested the phone back into his control.  
  
James does not answer. His cuticles are very interesting. He examines them carefully.  
  
“ _James_. Kendall doesn’t want you around.”  
  
“He’s made that perfectly clear, thanks,” James sulks.  
  
“Stop making the face I know you’re making. Can you honestly blame him? He went back to Minnesota to get away from you.”  
  
 _Wow_. “You really know where to hit a guy where it hurts.”  
  
“James,” Logan drops his voice, soft as a hug. “Do you know how hard you are to get away from?”  
  
He means it nicely, James thinks. Carlos, however, chimes in, “Yeah, dude, your face is like, everywhere. And your voice. Kendall’d have to off himself to escape you for realsies.”  
  
Logan cuts in, “He just wants to heal. Can’t you let him have that?”  
  
James frowns. “This doesn’t look like healing. This looks like he’s trying to see which he can get first; chlamydia or alcohol poisoning.”  
  
Carlos whistles. “Bitter is not a good look on you, man. But yay for Kendall, getting laid. That’s my boy.”  
  
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate the congrats when his dick falls off,” James responds scathingly.  
  
“Ooh, nah, man, I don’t want to think about Kendall’s gears and parts. Uncool,” Carlos whines.  
  
Logan makes a noise and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _morons_. Then he says, “I can book you a flight back tonight.”  
  
“No.”  
  
In this, James is firm. He’s not leaving. He’s not going to go another stretch of years without Kendall in his life.  
  
Kendall implied that he didn’t know what it meant to try, but James isn’t doing this now because it’s convenient for him. It’s because he’s gone for so long without trying that he has to give this a real chance.  
  
Logan sighs noisily. “James, please don’t mess with him.”  
  
“Would I ever?”  
  
Logan, gentle, pacifist Logan, replies scathingly, “Yes. You’re a fucking relationship black hole for Kendall. Don’t suck him back in. I’m asking you, as your friend, not to mess with him.”  
  
James does not have to put up with this kind of abuse. “I’ve got a party to go to tonight.”  
  
Carlos whoops. Logan groans. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”  
  
Pssh.  
  
“I can honestly say that I have absolutely no idea.”

 

 

 

\---

  
The party is at a sorority that has a bunch of X’s on the door, and who even thought that was a good idea?  
  
One of Kendall’s frat brothers, a nerdy looking kid named Konas, had pushed the flyer into James’s hand before he left the house earlier that day.  
  
“You mean something to Kendall,” he’d said, all worried eyes and pursed lips. “So fight for him.”  
  
James intends on doing just that. If he can, you know, find him. He taps his hands on the steering wheel of his rental car, waiting for the rattle of Kendall’s old hunker engine.  
  
It’s pouring outside, wet as fuck, and people keep running up the drive to the sorority house with reckless abandon, umbrellas inverted from the wind, rain dripping down their faces. They look younger and more carefree than James has felt in a long, long time.  
  
When Kendall finally does show up, some odd seven guys pour out from his car. They all sprint up the walk to the door and tumble inside, and James has to bolt after them to keep up. At the entryway, he glimpses Konas, and that Bryan kid, and another, smaller, smiley guy flirting up a few pretty girls that have Venetian masks covering half their faces.  
  
They’re not the only ones going incognito; Kendall’s picked up a simple black plastic mask. There’s a box of them, discarded next to a toppled lamp. A redhead looks like she’s supposed to be passing them out, but she’s more focused on her cellphone, so she doesn’t appear to notice Kendall’s theft. It hides his distinctive eyebrows from view, shadows mossy green. But nothing can conceal those dimples of his, or the way his smile quirks when his friends shout something idiotic.  
  
James lets some girl press a mask of his own onto his face, but he’s focused across the party, where Kendall’s already made his way. The big man on campus begins shotgunning a beer with practiced ease. He draws a crowd fast, in the form of a pretty blonde cheering him on.  
  
A pretty blonde with lots of cleavage and not a lot of sobriety left. James decides she won’t get to be Kendall’s latest conquest. He’s going to corner him, and force him to, to…okay, so James hasn’t exactly planned that far ahead, but it’s happening, damnit. He’s not letting up until they’re friends again, at the very least.  
  
James takes action immediately, because this can’t be like the last party. Kendall is entirely too popular for his own good, and even aside from the giggly blonde, there are people all over the floor staring at him in askance, in hunger, in deference, whatever. Tonight, Kendall belongs to James.  
  
By the time James manages to make it to his side, Kendall’s gained another hanger-on, a short boy with big brown eyes that remind James weirdly of Carlos. The kid lights up when he sees James, tugging on Kendall’s t-shirt and saying, “Hey, hey, isn’t that your friend-dude-person-thing?”  
  
Kendall tries to bore holes in James with his eyes. “He’s certainly a dude-person-thing.”  
  
“Well, come on, hey, offer him a beer, be friendly, Knight.” The tiny kid tosses a can of Natty Ice at James’s head, and he catches it with slower reflexes than he remembers having. Maybe he should take a page from Kendall’s book and hit the rink more often, but with eight hours of dance and choreography a day, he’s not sure where he’d find the time.  
  
James stares at the can like he’s never seen one before, and Kendall intones meanly, “He doesn’t drink domestic.”  
  
“Do too,” James protests. He just hasn’t since his last high school party in Minnesota, but it’s not his fault that Hollywood is the land of Grey Goose and import beer.  
  
The kid, who James thinks he met before – he’s got a J name. Joel, maybe? No, Jesse – shrugs and gestures around the sorority house. “These girls are on a budget, man. In between partying, they’ve got to save the world.” His voice takes on a whiny edge. “I hate philanthropic organizations.”  
  
Kendall scowls. “We’re a philanthropic organization, dumbass.”  
  
“Yeah, but we can afford Ketel One. Our fundraising doesn’t blow,” Jesse says that last part much more loudly than is strictly necessary.  
  
The nearest sorority sister flips him off.  
  
Kendall glares at James harder, if that’s at all possible. “Look what you started.”  
  
“How is this in any way my fault?”  
  
“You’re causing dissension in the ranks.”  
  
James is not impressed. “I am not. I’m drinking a beer.” He holds out his hand for Kendall’s keys, shaking the can viciously. So he’s been a little spoiled the last few years. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t learn all the tricks. He just learned them with craft brews.  
  
He punctures the aluminum and Jesse lets out a whoop while he swallows it down in long, long gulps. Kendall rolls his eyes, but challenge lights behind the mask. James can already tell he’s going to turn this into a pissing contest.  
  
And hey, he thinks. Competing with Kendall is way better than being ignored.

 

 

 

  
\---

  
Five beers and six very angry sorority girls later – apparently that case of Natty was actually meant for flip cup, oops, and Jesse nearly puking on the carpet probably didn’t help – they’re standing in a very, very brightly lit kitchen. There’s a lot of white cabinets and white floors, stained with jello residue and scuff marks, but it’s all still freaky luminescent. James stares, his vision fizzing at the edges.  
  
He’s not drunk, not by a longshot, but he’s buzzed, and Kendall is buzzed, and Jesse is apparently just a total lightweight. He’s dry-heaving over the sink.  
  
James isn’t, so there. He says, “So I’m thinking that tequila shot was a bad idea.”  
  
“Thought it was water,” Jesse gasps. “It looked like water.”  
  
“It smelled like gasoline.” Kendall pats Jesse on the back, and yeah, this reminds James exactly of the time Carlos overstuffed himself on corn dogs.  
  
“You know what-“ Jesse starts, all angry-like, but then he squints up at James, bleary with drunkeness and says more carefully. “Y’know what? You look just like James Diamond, ohmigod. You’re totally him.”  
  
“I’m really not,” James replies good-humoredly.  
  
“Really?” Kendall asks innocently. “Are you sure?”  
  
“He is a liar! Hey, this guy is totally James Diamoooond.” Jesse flaps his hands wildly in the air. Then he pales. “I don’t feel so good.”  
  
“Drink some water,” Kendall recommends gently, pushing a cup into his waiting grip. He discards his plastic mask, then Jesse’s, and James does the same.  
  
He tells Kendall, “You’re good at this. Babysitting.”  
  
Jesse makes an offended noise. Kendall shrugs. “He was in my pledge class. I’m his big brother in all the ways that matter.”  
  
“Kendall’s so good to me,” Jesse coos into his plastic water cup, trying to pinch Kendall’s cheek at the same time.  
  
Kendall does not shy away, because Kendall is a gentleman. Again, he instructs, “Water.”  
  
In the living room, the song wailing over the speakers changes track. James winces.  
  
“They’re playing your song,” Kendall informs him quietly.  
  
“I love this song. I. Love. This. Song.” Jesse props his chin on his hands and continues in a slur, “No, but like. Everyone should love this song. It’s all deep and stuff. Like, what if you loved someone so much that you’d do anything to see them smile? Have you ever felt like that?”  
  
No way. Kendall’s not actually going to answer that, is he?  
  
The universe hates James, so yes. “Once, I loved someone so much that I would have gone anywhere. I would have done anything. I would have died, if they asked me to.”  
  
Jesse makes a bemused face. “When you put it like that, s’not healthy.”  
  
Kendall meets James’s eyes, and fuck, fuck, things were so much easier when they were little, when their biggest problems were Xbox games they couldn’t afford and who to blame when they accidentally broke Mrs. Magicowski’s window.  
  
“It probably wasn’t,” Kendall admits on a laugh, bitter. “But it’s the kind of thing people write songs about, right?”  
  
“Aw. Awwww. Awwwwwww,” Jesse pets Kendall’s arm. “She was a lucky lady. What happened?”  
  
“She,” Kendall bites out, “Didn’t think I was worth it.”  
  
 _That’s not true_ , James wants to say. Only, when he thinks about it, it kind of is.  
  
The idea makes him feel sick. Back when they started out, James thought Kendall was a superhero in disguise. He wanted him so badly it made him ache. But superheroes aren’t real, and James wasn’t willing to pin his trust on anything imaginary, no matter how many times Kendall had come through for him.  
  
In the end, yeah. James decided that Kendall wasn’t worth it.  
  
“That is the worst love story I’ve ever heard. You are a buzzkill,” Jesse announces, all forlorn.  
  
“Whatever, it’s fine. I needed it,” Kendall tells his horrified expression. “I needed to get away from California. I only stuck around because I thought my friends needed me, but…in the end, they were all capable and adept and independent, while I guess I was just waiting to fail.”  
  
Kendall takes a swig of his beer, and James doesn’t know what’s happening, because this is new. This he’s never heard before.  
  
“I think failure was always my fallback plan, even when I didn’t know it was an option. But y’know how it goes. With low expectations, you can never really be let down.” Kendall is being all factual and pragmatic and wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.  
  
“That wasn’t the problem.” James can’t help saying.  
  
“Oh yeah?” Kendall eyes him warily. “What was the problem?”  
  
“Your expectations were never low, dude. They were always, always unreasonably high.” James is biting the inside of his cheek, drawing blood, but he can’t stop talking. Why does his mouth never listen to him?  
  
“Like yours weren’t, Mister-I-Want-To-Be-Famous?”  
  
Jesse mouths _I-Want-To-Be-Famous_ and yelps, “I knew it!”  
  
Then he promptly pukes water and something red into the sink.  
  
James ignores him.  
  
“Maybe mine were too, but I wanted things out of, out of like, _life_ and you wanted stuff from us, from me an’ Carlos an’ Logan, and the difference there is that people always let you down,” he reasons, because that’s true.  
  
Kendall’s eyes flutter shut. He takes a deep, deep breath and asks, “James. When did I ever let you down?”  
  
James opens his mouth.  
  
James closes his mouth.

 

 

 

\---

  
They end up carting Jesse home, with Konas, Bryan, and this Donovan kid crammed in the backseat, trying to take care of him. He looks like he wishes they weren’t there; Jesse hangs his head out the window, pallor sickly green.  
  
And James has a front row seat. He leaves his rental car in front of the sorority house, because Kendall insists. “You’ve had too much to drink.”  
  
“I had as much as you!”  
  
“You had tequila shots with Jesse, dummy,” Kendall mutters, and he sounds less angry and more fond. But lest James forget his place, he shoots him frosty, irritated glances for most of the car ride, and Bryan joins in, apparently concerned that James might try to strangle their fearless president somewhere along the short drive to Chi Phi Kappa.  
  
Being surrounded by all these guys, joking and laughing and yeah, being slightly ill, makes James a little homesick.  
  
He thinks of California, of the day he and Kendall started dating for real.  
  
Kendall finally came to him after Jo, after Lucy, after all the girls in Minnesota that had ended up being disappointments. James doesn’t remember exactly how the conversation started, only that they were at a fire pit near Playa del Rey, roasted marshmallow’s melting gooey in his mouth, and Carlos kept sticking his hands so close to the flames that his sleeves caught sparks. Each time, Logan would tackle him into the sand, and his attempts to stomp out the smoldering embers would be met with a hardcore wrestling match, because Carlos didn’t know how to be tactile without taking it too far.  
  
James was leaning into Kendall’s side, because it was warm and safe and they were buds, and he’d resigned himself to that, to being _buds_ for all eternity. He’d tried pushing his luck with it once or twice or five times before, drunk each and every one of them. Kendall would accept a kiss, would let James grope around, but before it got anywhere good he’d always gently shove him away. “You don’t want this,” he’d say, and that was bullshit, because Kendall was the one who kept shooting him down. James’s pants were tight and his dick was hard and he’d never wanted anything more.  
  
And that was- well, it wasn’t fine, but it was whatever. James backed down with as much grace as he ever did, which is to say he sulked up a storm, and then he went back to the countless bevy of boys and girls who appreciated his advances.  
  
But this particular night, they were both punch-drunk and giddy, liquor sweet on their tongues, the taste of s’mores sweeter still. James planted a happy kiss on Kendall’s cheek without even thinking about it, because Kendall was what he always wanted when he was happy.  
  
Kendall jerked back, a frustrated noise escaping his lips. “You can’t keep doing this.”  
  
“Doing what?” James had asked, curling his toes into the sand.  
  
Kendall folded into himself, the pupils of his eyes reflecting orange-blue-black. Starlight freckled his shoulders and silvered his lips. He said, “Being all affectionate when you’re drunk. It’s not fair.”  
  
James swallowed thickly. “It’s not like I can do it when I’m sober.”  
  
Kendall’s head had shot up, questions written across every angle of his face. “What makes you think that?”  
  
“You don’t like guys.”  
  
Kendall drew the night into his mouth, a sharp inhale, and when he let his breath out James could smell graham crackers and wood smoke. “James. I like _you_.”  
  
“That’s not what you said when we were twelve.”  
  
“When we were twelve, I thought girls had cooties, still.” Kendall raked his fingers through his hair, wheat blond and old gold, shimmering orange and gray where it caught the light. He’d repeated, seriously, “I like you.”  
  
And then Carlos had yelled something like, “Just kiss already!” and the mood had broken completely.  
  
Only, Kendall did kiss James, later, when they were back in the quiet familiarity of the Palmwoods. He’d told James, “I like your smile.”  
  
He’d told James, “I like your voice.”  
  
He’d told James, “I like how you board anyone who comes after me on the ice, and you spend like, eight hours on your hair, and you always smell like coconuts and wildflowers.”  
  
He’d said, “I like your heart,” and, again, “I like you.”  
  
James had thought that was the be all and end all of their love story, right there.  
  
Happily ever after, just like it was supposed to be.

 

 

 

\---

  
“Here. You can sleep in these.” Kendall thrusts an old t-shirt and a pair of ratty sweats out at James’s face.  
  
“And where, exactly, am I sleeping?” James casts about for something recognizable, but there is nothing familiar here. Like the rest of the Chi Phi Kappa, Kendall’s four walls are constructed of old, old wood molding and a lot of discolored plaster. There are no posters and no keepsakes, at least none that James has seen before.  
  
It’s like Kendall left behind every relic of his old life, every artifact that reminded him of childhood, or Los Angeles, or James.  
  
“On the floor. Or you can go find a couch. Bryan’s got a beanbag chair in his room.” Kendall doesn’t meet James’s eyes. He is pale in the lamplight pooling from his bedside table. “I don’t really care.”  
  
“Can I sleep here, then?” The house is ancient, and on a windy night like this, it creaks and groans. Although that might just be the guys downstairs, jumping around while they try to pound each other at MarioKart. James shivers from the influx of cool air seeping through the window well.  
  
He shivers from the hollow look in Kendall’s eyes.  
  
“That’s not funny.” Kendall’s words cut sharp.  
  
James clutches Kendall’s clothes to his chest. “It’s not supposed to be.”  
  
“You didn’t come back here for- you said we were friends. Not-“ He stops, voice cracking. “Don’t push it, James.”  
  
Except James still hasn’t met a button he doesn’t like, and he can’t help pressing down, hard. “It’s not like I’ve never slept next to you before.”  
  
“You gave that up.”  
  
“And now I’m trying to get it back. Apparently.” James feels like scum, because he _knows_ this isn’t fair. One thing at a time, not all the things all the time, but that’s just not how he was raised.  
  
“That’s not going to happen.” Kendall crosses his arms over his body, and he is sturdier now. His twenties are filling him out, broadening away the rest of that teenage gawkiness he’d hung onto.  
  
James wonders if his skin still feels the same.  
  
He is tipsy, and he is daring, and when he takes a step forward it is to see if Kendall will take a step back.  
  
He doesn’t.  
  
James says, “I want you.”  
  
“Stop it. Just stop, seriously,” Kendall grits out.  
  
“ _Kendall_. I need you,” James says, and he drops the clothes Kendall gave him in a heap on the ground, adding his own shirt to the pile.  
  
Kendall’s eyes get saucer-huge, outrage clear. He asks, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You don’t get to do this,” and it sounds so much like what he said on the beach that night that James falters for a moment. His lungs seize up in his chest.  
  
That night was perfect. It was happily ever after. How could he have ever let Kendall go?  
  
He says, “I’m not giving up.”  
  
Kendall snaps. He’s the one stepping forward now, up in James’s space, his thumbs pressing beneath James’s ears, right at the juncture of his jaw and his neck. “You already fucking gave up. You dumped me, remember?”  
  
Kendall is not using his inside voice, and it hurts more than anything ever should. James swallows, hard, warmth pricking beneath the surface of his skin. The pressure on his throat and the taste of Kendall’s breath on his lips is unsettling, intoxicating. James wants Kendall to touch him. He needs Kendall to touch him.  
  
Now is probably not the right time to admit that out loud. Kendall’s irises are thin rings of Alexandrite, his mouth parted, his incisors gimlet sharp. He sucks all the light from the room with his presence, and James nearly sobs with how close he is, too close by turns.  
  
James thinks he could come from this alone, really and honestly, and he also thinks about a different time, centuries ago it feels like, when Kendall was in his face just so, licking the cum off the jut of his knuckles.  
  
Kendall accuses, “I loved you, James, and you threw it back in my fucking face.”  
  
James wants to say _sorry_ , and _I did_ , and _please, please, please forgive me_ , but he can’t, he can’t, because Kendall is kissing James hard, so hard it hurts, and James is kissing back because isn’t this what he’s been waiting for? The world spins, the sky screams colors, life crumbles and restarts all around them. A single touch of Kendall’s lips and everything is right in the universe.  
  
James twists his fingers in the chain of Kendall’s lavaliere. He repeats harshly, “I want you.”  
  
Kendall is panting. Kendall is gorgeous, flushed and pissed off. “Oh yeah? Where were you all the times I wanted something?”  
  
There’s no malice in the words anymore, and he punctuates them with a kiss that James can feel all the way down to his toes. His marrow is molasses, his whole body melting against Kendall’s because it is where he belongs. This is always where he’s fit.  
  
The only thing James can hear is the cross-beat of his blood as he drags his body against Kendall’s. He gets a guttural growl for his work, and a, “One of these days you’re going to learn that it’s not nice to tease.”  
  
James isn’t particularly interested in being nice, so he does it again. Kendall’s hands come up to grip his biceps, hard enough to bruise.  
  
It is just like a memory. No one has ever taken control of his body quite like Kendall manages to do. He digs his fingers into James’s hips, and that, yeah, that’s going to bruise.  
  
The idea makes him hotter for it. He groans it into Kendall’s mouth, says, “Come on, fuck me, please.”  
  
Kendall gives him this look that feels exactly like drowning, and oh how James knows exactly what it’s like to tread water, to kick up from the arch of his foot to his calf to his knee to his thighs burning with it, keeping afloat for hours at a time until he gets so, so tired of trying to fight the currents. He expects Kendall to run away now, to maybe scamper off and lick his wounds and leave James all alone in his half undone jeans and a bedroom he doesn’t belong in.  
  
Instead Kendall steps in close, never able to turn down a challenge. He grinds their bodies together, so that the ache between their cocks is painful. And he holds James’s face rough between his hands and says, “You’re still so fucking beautiful.”  
  
That, more than anything, is what undoes James completely. He gets told he’s got a pretty face practically every hour of every day, has been proclaimed most gorgeous man in the US of A in Cosmo for the past four years running, but no one ever calls him beautiful, at least not with the same awed reverence that Kendall does.  
  
James helps him pull his shirt off, over his head, and then sets to work on his pants. His mind takes snapshots of Kendall’s eyes, green like envy, green like wildflower stems. Of the jut of his lip, wet with spit, pink-red from biting. Of the pale curve of Kendall’s wrist as he takes James in hand.  
  
After that, they kind of stop talking, but it’s fine.  
  
Their best conversations have always come from the hips.

 

 

 

\---

  
During the actual act of dumping Kendall, James said things.  
  
Thing like, _this isn’t working_.  
  
Things like, _we haven’t been happy together in a long time._  
  
Things like, _I don’t love you anymore_.  
  
That last one was the biggest lie of all.

 

 

 

\---

  
They’re lying tangled in the blankets on Kendall’s bed, playing a game of Do You Remember.  
  
Kendall starts it, about five minutes after they’ve both come, asking James mildly if he remembers the lyrics for Halfway There.  
  
“I forgot how it goes,” he admits sheepishly, with something like defeat in his voice.  
  
James has not forgotten how it goes, and he proves it by belting out the lyrics to what used to be Kendall’s verse, his voice strong and true. Then he inquires, “Do you remember how angry Gustavo was when we-“ and it all sort of spirals from there. Nothing’s off limits, from childhood memories to Logan’s abominable excuse for a love life, Katie’s attempts at world domination to Carlos’s manymanymany accidents. It’s comfortable, and fun, and the warmth of Kendall’s arms is a citadel, James’s last bastion against the chill night.  
  
He asks, “Do you remember Wayne Wayne?”  
  
Kendall makes a disgusted sound, pulling the comforter tighter around his chest. “God, I hated that guy.”  
  
“The Ziggle Zaggles are still a huge hit with four year olds. He’s got a mansion in Toluca Lake the size of a small planet,” James says helpfully.  
  
He presses his cold feet against Kendall’s calves and watches him squirm, revels in the way he ducks his head against James’s neck and mumbles _stop it_. “I’m not sure if that’s karmic justice or actual proof that the universe in unfair.”  
  
“Both. Can you imagine singing to kids about eating their vegetables?”  
  
There are worse fates, probably, but James can’t think of any.  
  
“It’d be pretty hugely hypocritical of me, considering I still don’t like to eat mine.” Kendall makes a face.. Then he lights up, utter glee breaking across his features. “Do you remember the first time you fell in love?”  
  
And now it’s James’s turn to wrinkle his nose, because Kendall might as well have asked if he remembers when the stars first began forming in the sky.  
  
Not that Kendall knows that.  
  
James made a point to never once mention how long he’d harbored feelings for his best friend, because he never knew how to say that he’d loved Kendall since he first knew what love was. It sounded pathetic, falling for the face of his bravery at four, the width of his smile at six, the lilt of his laugh at eight and ten and twelve. The strength of his shoulders at fourteen and the fierce determination at his back at sixteen and the way he’d wrap his arms around James and sing lullabies through the day they turned legal. As far as Kendall’s concerned, James’s first love is, “What was her name? She was awful, that voice, oh my god.”  
  
“It was cute.”  
  
“It was terrifying,” Kendall corrects, stretching his arm across James’s stomach. “Your taste in girls sucked when we were, what, eleven?”  
  
“Nine,” James corrects, pouting with a deliberate lack of venom, because this is an old argument and he is very used to losing it.  
  
“Your taste in girls still sucks.” Kendall pulls back a little, giving James his best stern-face. “I can’t believe you went back out with Aubrey Stewart.”  
  
“Oh, someone’s been following the tabloids.”  
  
“I don’t need to read Star to know what you’re doing with your life. Carlos tells me all about it.” Kendall’s expression shutters closed for a moment, dark eyes and a darker scowl. “Even when I tell him not to. I think he’s worried about you.”  
  
Carlos’s nose seriously needs an introduction to James’s fist. Evasively, James asks, “Why would he be worried?”  
  
“Because you keep dating people with the emotional maturity of plums.”  
  
“Hey. Aubrey is nice.”  
  
Aubrey _is_ nice. She’s also intensely private, but once James managed to wriggle his way past the bodyguards, he figured out that she was, in actuality, entirely too nice for the majority of Hollywood.  
  
“Fine, yeah, you’re right,” Kendall concedes. “That was unfair. Carlos is worried because _you_ have the emotional maturity of a plum.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, says the guy whose latest sexual encounter was an angry, drunken threesome,” James counters, nuzzling back in against Kendall’s collarbone so that Kendall won’t see how jealous it makes him.  
  
“It wasn’t angry. Who says it was angry?” James nips his skin. It is an I-am-not-at-all-fooled nip. Kendall rejoins, “Besides, my latest sexual encounter was with you, smarty pants.”  
  
He presses an open mouthed kiss to the side of James’s jaw, and James shivers into the contact. “About that. Is there going to be a repeat performance?”  
  
“Right now?” Kendall turns the kiss into a suck, and that is definitely going to leave a bruise.  
  
A moan shakes free from James’s ribcage, his lungs. It settles in the air and lingers, curls around the both of them and makes them hot under their skin. But James has to ask, has to know, “Are you dating anyone?”  
  
Kendall stops cold. It’s like James flicked a switch that read _bonerkill_.  “I don’t- _no_. I haven’t- I mean, I’ve dated people. I just haven’t…not that way…not since you.”  
  
He is embarrassed, annoyed; the red glow of his humiliation could probably light the room on its own.  
  
“You shouldn’t have made your life about me,” James breathes, and he sees Kendall’s eyelids flicker closed, pink-blue, lashes dusted gold. He doesn’t have to say _don’t you think I know that_ , because nothing could be more obvious. James forges on anyway, “Like, all those things you said before, about what you’ve lost- have you even tried to find them again? Have you tried to trust anyone new?”  
  
He’s playing the devil’s advocate. He doesn’t want Kendall to find someone else. He wants Kendall back. Now that he’s got him, naked, in bed, he can admit to himself that this was always the goal. But the part of him that kissed Kendall’s bloodied knees every time he fell skateboarding or mountain biking or fooling around, the part of him that had his elbows kissed in return?  
  
That part cannot stand the sadness that is abruptly hanging heavy across Kendall’s shoulders, the slump in his spine or the hard lines in the corners of his mouth.  
  
No one should be that unhappy looking when they’re in bed with James fucking Diamond.  
  
“Why should I have?” Kendall shrugs, and then his face crumples a bit. He says, “I probably don’t know how.”  
  
“So you learn.”  
  
Kendall wriggles out from the tight fold of James’s arms, propping himself up on his hands. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? Don’t you think I’ve been trying, all this time? So hard? I don’t know if I can do it anymore. I don’t know if I can _try_ anymore. No one’s been the way we were, and I’m burned out. _Fuck_.” His head hangs low. “How did I let you corner me like this, fucking again?”  
  
James refuses to the let that last part get to him. He sits up too, letting the blankets pool around his waist. “Dude, you’re what? Twenty five? If you only live to be eighty, you’ve got over fifty years left. If you get to be a hundred? You’ve got seventy five. You don’t even know where you’ll be come graduation, much less in all that time.”  
  
Kendall sags back against his pillow. James can count his ribs.  
  
James did just that, with his tongue, less than half an hour ago.  
  
“The past few years have just been- this.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean the next few will be.” James winces. He is so over arguing against his own case. “Although, you know. This, right here, isn’t bad. You could keep doing this. With me.”  
  
“Uh, I wasn’t planning on jumping out of bed anytime soon,” Kendall chuckles, obviously relieved by the change in subject.  
  
James drags a finger along his sternum, down, down, down to his navel. He dips it in and watches the way Kendall follows the movement with his eyes, tongue darting out to slick up his lower lip. “No. I mean, like. Keep doing this with me, and only me. For longer than tonight.”  
  
Kendall’s mouth drops open, and it is still kiss-red, still soft and wet. He is incredulous. He is too far away.  
  
James snags him back into a stranglehold-cuddle just as he asks, “How would that even work?”  
  
James mumbles into his hair, “You could come back to California. Gustavo would give you a job quicker than you could ask. You know you like, broke him when you left.”  
  
Kendall shakes his head, tries to shake free completely, “I can’t leave.”  
  
“Why not? You just said you hated this.” If James is petulant, that’s because he is really not good at sharing.  
  
“I said I hated being alone,” Kendall corrects edgily, and his guard is going up, James can see it building behind his eyes.  
  
“You’re alone because no one knows who you are here. You’ve met every single person who was singing on the radio at that party tonight, and for all anyone in that house knew, you were just…some frat president.”  
  
“I _like_ being a frat president.” Kendall does pull free of James, this time. “And they know who I am in all the ways that matter. The famous thing was never for me.”  
  
He climbs out of bed and starts shrugging into plaid boxers and a threadbare t-shirt, and, well, that’s totally the opposite of what James wants. He needs to stop having such a big fricking mouth.  
  
He protests, “You loved being famous,” because Kendall did.  
  
“I loved that you guys loved being famous. You said it yourself, I figured if you all were happy, I’d be happy.”  
  
“Were you?” James asks tentatively, fisting his fingers into the blanket, how did they get onto such unsteady ground?  
  
Kendall’s face is inscrutable. “I thought I was. Until, you told me different.”  
  
“And now?”  
  
Annoyed, Kendall turns away. James can see the shape of his spine through his thin shirt. James wishes he would take it back off again.  
  
“Does it really matter?”  
  
“Yes. Absolutely.”  
  
“Why, James?” Kendall’s fingers clench helplessly in the air. “It’s over. It’s done.”  
  
“It just- it matters.”  
  
James can’t have talked Kendall into thinking he was unhappy with the band. Those are some of the best memories of his life, and they can’t mean less to Kendall than they do him, because, because, because what? Because it would mean that Kendall really doesn’t care anymore?  
  
No, James thinks. Because it would mean James has no chance whatsoever of ever turning things back to normal. He reaches out to Kendall, to beckon him back to bed, and Kendall shrinks away. “Fine, okay, yeah. I was happy then. But…I’m happy now, too, mostly. It’s different. It’s a different kind of happy.”  
  
James tries to breathe. His voice wobbles. He speaks at a whisper. “Where do I fit into that?”  
  
Kendall does not have an answer. Unsubtle as anything, he asks, “You know what I did read in the tabloids? That you’re thinking about switching to acting. They said you wanted to be part of that film adaptation of Sixty Shades of Green. Is that what does it for you now? Heaving bosoms and bodice ripping?”  
  
“That’s always done it for me,” James responds sullenly. “But Kendall-“  
  
“Okay, Fabio. I’m going to, um. Take a shower. I’ll be back. Go to sleep.”  
  
“But-“  
  
“Fifteen minutes, tops,” Kendall promises.

 

 

 

\---

  
Kendall does not come back. James wakes up to a gray morning, alone, and he wonders how far past damage control he is. At this point, can bandages and apologies even save anything, or is it time to give in and just fucking amputate?

 

 

 

\---

  
James finds Chi Phi Kappa’s fearless leader downstairs, playing beer pong with Konas and Jesse. He’s on his own, but the second he sees James standing at the foot of the stairs, he says, “Oh, come on then, you look like someone just tried to play badminton with your Tween Choice zeppelin, come here, come along.”  
  
“Told you,” Jesse hisses, nudging Konas, and he does not look even a drop of hungover. That is supremely unjust.  
  
James trudges over to the pong table, but he isn’t particularly enthused. “You know this is never going to work out. We might have been big names once, but we’re the underdogs in this fight.” He crosses his eyes trying to think, and wow, “I haven’t played in at least five years.”  
  
Kendall laughs, delighted and fierce. “Which is why we’re going to win. People always underestimate the underdog.”  
  
“For good reason,” James argues, taking the ping pong ball Kendall offers with more than a little trepidation. “Isn’t it a little early for beer?”  
  
“Dude, relax. Where’s your sense of adventure? It’s just a friendly game.”  
  
“If by friendly you mean you are going to crash and _burn_ ,” Konas calls across the table.  
  
Now _that_ James takes offense to. He turns to Kendall. “We are going to destroy them, right?”  
  
Kendall’s eyes narrow. “Oh, yeah.”

 

 

 

\---

  
They do not destroy Konas and Jesse. They actually lose rather abysmally. But in the end it’s okay, because Kendall takes James back upstairs and kisses him slow and unhurried, and then fucks him even slower and more unhurriedly.  
  
Kendall says, “So, I guess you’re not leaving yet?” while James shudders underneath him, and James bites his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.  
  
He licks metallic off Kendall’s teeth and groans, “I guess I’m not.”

 

 

 

  
\---

  
He stays for the entire week, ignoring calls from his agent, his manager, the record studio, and Logan.  
  
Okay, not ignoring so much as taking them without actually listening to anything that is said. Kendall watches him with vague interest, more focused on his class notes than anything James is doing. Maybe he really never did care about the whole fame thing.  
  
He’s not playing hockey anymore, James finds out when he dares to ask. He doesn’t pry more than that, because the idea makes him irrevocably sad. But James is not surprised, not really, because he’s always known that Kendall would end up hating that he’d given up the Wild to sing. He’s a little ashamed, even though it was never a decision that James asked Kendall to make. He’d still kind of guilted Kendall into it, a little bit. He’d made him choose between the future and _James_ , and James has never really been able to face the culpability of that. Kendall made sacrifices for him, but James didn’t know how to sacrifice anything…except their friendship.  
  
Maybe that had a huge part in their breakup that day all those years ago, too, how James saw it in Kendall’s eyes.  
  
Everything that Kendall wanted.  
  
Everything he wasn’t willing to give.  
  
He did the cowardly thing. He ran. Now he is living with the consequences, but hey, the consequences don’t feel so bad. At night, they fall asleep together, and it is everything that James has wanted, everything he’s been waiting for. But, well. He still doesn’t know what’s happening.  
  
James feels like Kendall’s dirty secret. He should like that, right? There is nothing hotter than forbidden romance. But James thinks the concept is mostly kind of boring. He wants to celebrate this, wants to shout out to the sky that he’s gaining ground in a battle he thought he’d lost.  
  
He cards his fingers through Kendall’s hair and tells him softly, “You are all of my favorite memories. Come back to me.”  
  
If only he could figure out how to say that when Kendall is awake.

 

 

 

  
\---

  
James is gathering courage, gathering his heart and ready to take a risk. He’s almost there, almost prepared when Kendall finally turns to him and says, “We can’t keep doing this. You need to go home.”  
  
James actually has to get over his shock, because he is not used to Kendall telling him no, at least not when they’re both calm, collected, not fighting. He thought he was repairing things here, thought things were getting back to normal, but James somehow forgot that nothing is normal anymore.   
  
“I can stay.”  
  
“You can’t. I’ve got exams. And Logan’s called me like eight times, frantic. Something about a new song?” Kendall waves his cellphone in the air.  
  
“Then, okay, we can, um. I’m rich. Long distance is totally workable. We can-“  
  
“No.”   
  
“What?” James’s insides are lead, and Kendall spoke so softly. He must have heard wrong.  
  
He has to have heard wrong.  
  
“Long distance isn’t workable. Close distance isn’t workable. This was…James, god. I can’t be with you like this. Not again.”  
  
“Then what was this week about?” James asks, more wounded than he has a right to be, probably. He’s the one who came waltzing in, asking for friendship and then trying for more.  
  
“Closure?” Kendall guesses, quirking his lips, sucking on the inside of his cheek.  
  
“Kendall, I-”  
  
“No. Don’t make me argue about this. _Please_.”  
  
“I…but why?” James asks finally, gasping, choking, dying. Getting dumped has never felt quite like this.  
  
“Look- oh, dude, don’t look at me that way.” Kendall throws his arms around James’s neck, tugging him in and holding him close. He’s gentler than he’s been with James in forever. “This isn’t fair. This is so the opposite of fair. I think, sometimes life hurts more than it should.”  
  
“So then why?” James repeats desperately, and he is breaking inside, he is a jigsaw puzzle being scattered to the wind, he is a deflating balloon or shattered ceramic.  
  
“I loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. More than I ever will love anyone, probably,” Kendall whispers fiercely into James’s neck, clutching him like he’s the last barrier between this, all of this, and the rest of the universe. His hands are firebrands on James’s shoulders, along his side, his spine. James can feel their heat in his bones, and he thinks maybe it would be okay if this was all there ever was, him and Kendall and the wind until they both turned to ash and drifted away.  
  
Only, Kendall does not want him.  
  
“But you’re right. I’ve got to get over it. I’ve got to move on.”  
  
“But, I- what about me?” The last word is plaintive. It is a sob that James never meant to let out. Kendall pulls back, and this time around, he is not apologetic.  
  
He says, “James, you chose to leave. Me. The band. Everything. And that’s always going to be the thing that stands between us.”  
  
“Stop being so- just _stop_. I’m choosing you now. I choose you, and I’m going to keep choosing you,” James says, throat raw, clutching Kendall’s face between his hands.  
  
For a millisecond, Kendall’s pupils widen, and James thinks that he’s won. He thinks Kendall’s going to forgive him, like he always has.  
  
But then he squeezes his eyes shut, and he says, “It’s too late. It’s time for me to choose, I don’t know, _myself_. God, this fucking sucks. I know you’re trying, and it was cruel of me to tell you that you weren’t, before, just. There’s no way that you’re ever going to be able to make this better, even if I let you stick around.”  
  
“You can’t know that,” James protests, because no, this can’t actually be how this ill-advised trip ends. He was doing so damn well. He was making everything _right_ again.  
  
“I can though. It’s kind of sad, but…I don’t want you anymore.”  
  
It sounds like a revelation.  
  
It sounds like James’s heart crumbling.  
  
Kendall continues, “All this time, I thought my life would be better if I had you back. But you and I aren’t the same. It’s the idea of who we used to be that I’ve missed, and…fuuuuck, I’m screwing this up so bad.” He draws back from James, stares him straight in the eye. James feels like he’s swallowed an entire icicle. He feels like he wants to curl up and die. “I’m not saying this to be mean. Really. I’m saying…I’m saying that I spent twenty years of my life knowing nothing but you. And as much as I miss you, and as good as we are together, I’m starting to think that there has to be more out there.”  
  
“Don’t,” James begs him, pleads with him.  
  
Kendall shakes his head, fierce. He’s always so fierce, James’s lion-boy, James’s fire-boy, and he is also not James’s at all.  
  
“I need new adventures, and to have them, I need to let you go. Finally.”  
  
James rejoins, “I thought you said you didn’t know how.” It is an accusation, and it sounds exactly like one.  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
Kendall releases James, and that’s worse than anything, because James doesn’t know if he’s supposed to fight his way back into Kendall’s arms or respect what Kendall wants.  
  
Which is more likely to push Kendall further away?  
  
“I still haven’t figured that part out. But I do know that _this_ isn’t working. You back in my life isn’t making anything better. And maybe I’ll be miserable forever, missing you. But I don’t know. Maybe, one day, I’ll find a way to be totally okay again.”  
  
Kendall actually smiles then, and it is real and it is honest. It makes James’s breath quicken and his heart race and he can’t do this. He can’t do the right thing and pretend that this will make him stronger. That maybe he can deal with the distance and the wanting without having a minor meltdown. He cannot go back to before, to trying to hide in the warm crevices of someone else’s body to erase the biggest mistake he ever made, and fuck, he lied, of course he regrets it. He’s spent so long pretending he doesn’t because he never knew that regret could be so big, so huge, a gaping wound that never, ever closes.  
  
Choosing his career was important, but keeping Kendall close was important too, and he always knew it. James never quite completely fell out of love with him.  
  
“You. You actually believe that.” James hesitates. “You look- weird. Happy.”  
  
He feels horrible for it. This thing that he has with Kendall is so complicated, and he feels like every step he takes is wrong, but this. This didn’t feel wrong. So why is Kendall staring at him like he’s a million pounds lighter, like there’s this weight off his chest?  
  
Kendall tilts his head, that earnest smile tugging the corners of his lips even wider. It’s still a pale ghost of what it used to be, but it’s a smile all the same. “I guess…I kind of am. Who knew closure actually was a real thing?”  
  
James didn’t.  
  
James doesn’t.  
  
This isn’t anything like closure, not for him.

 

 

 

  
\---

  
Back in Hollywood, he dreams about Minnesota. About Kendall, out on the front porch of the frat house, watching the blue, blue sky like it might swoop down and swallow him whole.  
  
But it’s just a dream. He still has to get up, to go out, and it’s like James is trailing stardust; everyone wants to grab a handful for themselves.  
  
He feels like clay, like every single person who touches him leaves fingerprints, some pressed in so much deeper than others. Kendall burned right through him.  
  
And now he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
